Strangers from Another Ballroom in a Different Time

“Y’know, this mask thingy’s kinda too pretty for ya. Needs more horns.”

I would hate every part of this more if I hadn’t already been forced through it many, many times. Or perhaps I’d hate it less.

Mostly, I can’t bring myself to care.

The one bright spot is Seelis happily perched on my shoulder and the looks she gathers for it as we sweep into the room. These kinds of events were the bane of my life before she came along and brightened it. Though at least before, in this time, I had the excuse of illness to keep to my rooms.

Sister didn’t bite that one when I gave it, unsurprisingly.

“Sooo, we gonna do anythin’ except hang around behind ya sister lookin’ grumpy?” Sels asks, nibbling said mask with its ornate flaring edges and stitched design of a goose that still looks too much like a swan for my taste. All sister’s idea, of course. She’d put me in a kimono if she could.

This tunic almost was one before I imbued it into a looser cut with tighter trousers of a style not in fashion, yet. “I’m here as a disgraced decoration, it would be improper of me to do anything less.”

Sels grins evilly in the corner of my eye. “Oh yeah?”

I merely smile. I’ve gotten quite good at not listening to a word sister says as she smalltalks her way through the palace’s grand room, its crystal-paned ceiling letting the sunlight through in warped rainbows. Instead, I’m treated to whispers behind gloved hands and subtle glances.

Those, I catch and return with a smile befitting of one touched by a devil.

“Oooh, that one’s a scorcher. Lookit ‘im, he nearly peed himself.”

“A mask is always easy to slip back into.” I let it slip into a smirk I don’t particularly feel as sister moves on, and a familiar feathered face catches my eye. “You’d be surprised, the amount of times I had to attend an event like this after Lonni Dynas died and Dyste-Eino became sister’s mysterious new Guardian.”

“Didja just call yaself your own name.”

“This is exactly like old times.” I pluck a delicate crystal chalice off the tray of a servant and deftly steal away the tray itself with practiced ease. “Excuse me.”

“Ah—”

With a wink back at her, I leave my post at sister’s side, instead striding past magistrates and officials, leaving hushed conversations and tracking eyes in my wake.

The gryphon magistrate of Treeline—whose name I never remember—for all his powers of owlish hearing, jumps when I appear before him, offering the ornate brass tray of chalices with one hand, the other occupied raising my own to my smiling lips. “Your honour, please, have a drink.”

The little boy in me would have delighted in the way that feathery head swivels so quickly, if Seelis’s snickering grin is any indication.

“You....” His stiff ears twitch. “Aren’t you...?”

“How have the woods been, my lord? You and your people are doing better now that the shadow has left your forest, I trust.” I shift the tray closer invitingly. “Please, I insist.”

He gingerly takes a chalice too small for his meaty talons, feathers fluffing in pompous discomfort. “Yes well, Treeline is doing very well for itself.”

“No thanks to your lying and manipulation, hmm?”

“I have done no such—! Baseless accusations!” He draws himself up, glaring down on me with formidable golden eyes. “I have done no such thing—”

“Have your priests not found the remains of the fissure that threatened Kukunoshi? Have they not blessed the grove yet? Did you truly have no knowledge of your own bowmen’s actions?” I hum, watching his ears twitch. “Our priests have heard differently. Could that be the reason you’re hiding in the corner, here?”

He says nothing, wisely keeping his beak shut tight.

“I hope you weren’t planning to kill us along with Akir and Jeanu. Father can be a force to reckon with, if you make him angry.” I smile the smile of those with a knife up their sleeve, and withdraw the tray. “I’d look forward to your deposal— you could have worse fates.”

That cheery message delivered, Seelis offering a stuck-out tongue over my shoulder and a rude wing flick, I parade more of myself across the room, meandering back to sister’s side.

“You’re a real savage brass boot, huh,” Seelis snickers wickedly. “He didn’t know what hit him.”

“Hm.” I idly rub behind her ear, catching her by surprise, and offer the haughtiest smirk in my repertoire at the staring magistrates of Eastwater and Salt Bay with their little clique by the refreshments. Magistrate Pompous back there isn’t the only one to follow his agenda to his own ruination. Half of those in this room did their best to be a stumbling block after sister rose to power—fealty can be a fickle thing. “It’s an art you pick up from being around too many haughty beings who believe themselves the gods of their own empires.”

“Brrumghb?”

I raise my eyebrows at the limp goose on my shoulder and stop.

“Hey don’t stoppit!” Usually she’d be pecking me for doing that in the first place. “Keep doin’ tha’ thas nice.”

There’s the cat. I raise my eyes to the crystal ceiling with a smile, switching to thumb and letting her puddle there on my shoulder with a purr only I can hear under the noise. No shame.

My Seelis never felt safe enough to be so free in a space like this. So much rougher around the edges than this sparkling firebrand.

I’m glad that this one thing... I could do right.

“Where did you wander off to, my Guardian?” Sister, of course, looks at the little fledgling with a cool kind of distaste no other human would notice.

I let my own gaze cool, baring a smile reserved solely for her. Keep looking at her that way, dear sister. “Here and there.”

She twitches at the whisper of my voice across the chain, eyes flicking away from Sels with the hint of a grimace. I’ll bet she loved finally being able to slit such an innocent little throat.

I let out a quiet breath. “When are you planning to get this over with?”

“Patience, oh brother dear.” She turns away with a smile on her painted lips as a subtle wave moves through the crowd—awed murmurs. “I thought you’d like to meet some guests of ours first, seeing how fascinated by Angrilan history you seem to be.”

My thumb stills.

She refuses to turn and meet my eyes, moving to greet the rustle of the parting crowd, their whispers all too familiar.

“Hey, what’s the thunder for?” Sels mumbles in my ear.

Just as two very familiar figures stroll into view, twin jade horns curling proudly through snow-white hair, lamb-like ears serenely still. Their sapphire eyes land on me, and pupils slit in a demon’s grin, the faintest hint of sharp teeth glinting between those perfect lips.

I return it with more teeth than smile. Ah, so that’s why our immissure friend rolled over.

“Haven’t you been busy, sister.”

Her eyes cant back to meet mine, a faint smirk subtly lifting her mouth at those soft words. “You chase endless threads, and I secure our future.”

“Ironic words, with two ‘Angrilans’ in the room.”

She sighs, interestingly enough, turning fully to me and gesturing towards our “guests”, who continue to smile serenely. “I should explain. This is Lanshi and her twin Dashaai. They come from a remnant of Angrila past the Dividing Mountains, and have pledged their assistance to us in our fight against Noruaas.”

This sense of deja vu is four years too early. I match her voice raised to project to the crowd, cutting through the chatter with a verbal knife. “A nice sentiment that would be, if they weren’t immissures of the devil itself.”

Silence reigns absolute, as I lift my eyebrows at sister’s abrupt stillness. “Do you really believe there’s a remnant in the wildlands over the mountains? Fissures have left that land as barren as Angrila itself—I should know, I’ve seen it. Or did you forget how our people fought in the ranges for so long? It was Emperor Reisen’s success in pushing them back over the mountains that gave us the empire we have today.”

I turn towards the upper table where he’s been mingling uncharacteristically quiet throughout this sham of an event. “Isn’t that true, your highness?”

He remains as still as sister, standing tall under a hundred eyes. “No, I have never seen any sign of civilisation beyond those mountains.”

“We are well-hidden, for our own safety,” a voice with the musical tone of a bell and a subtle undercurrent of humour says. “Not everything beyond the mountains is wasteland, either. There are lands you know nothing about, dear Prince-turned-Guardian.”

That voice is a snake hiding beneath the blankets. I hated it even when I didn’t know what it was. Funny, how much it reminds me of Haimilia. The glint in her eye is just the same, her face just as effortlessly unreadable with that faint smile someone else might call compassionate.

Ilempo’s touched them up just to mess with me, it seems.

“But, if you need something more....” Both twins pull up their sleeves, each drawing a lacquered nail down pale skin. “Then let us prove we bleed the same red that you do.”

Heavy crimson drops spill over, dripping to the smooth stone floor. And that, for once, is new.

The speaking twin smiles serenely, despite the perfectly red blood in perfectly red flesh pooling at her feet. “I trust this satisfies you?”

It seems Ilempo’s done more than a simple touch-up.